So, despite finding a bookstore here in Budapest that had copies of both Gravity's Rainbow AND The Master and Margarita (in English--though I would love to be able to read Bulgakov in the original Russian, and the idea of trying to read Pynchon translated into Hungarian brings an entire new tier of significance to the phrase "delightfully masochistic"), I forced myself to pass up hugely tempting, yet expensive--5500ft for the pair--books that I can buy easily and cheaply once I return to the States, and would probably have to leave behind when I went home because of shipping and space considerations anyway. Instead I made do with a 600ft copy of "Dubliners" and Penguin's free compendium of single chapters of "The Best Books Ever Written", a display of which the shop had thoughtfully arranged next to the register. And the beat-up copy of Atlas Shrugged I badgered one of the members of the hostel staff into letting me buy from their bookstore after hours. (If Târgu Mureş ever figures out how to deliver my Economist subscription, I'll be drowning in reading material again anyway.)

Would that I had managed to show the same level of restraint during my near-daily visits to Azték Choxolat ...